60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley fired by CBS News after clash

Scott Pelley at a CBS event in New York in 2013. Photograph: Charles Sykes/AP View image in fullscreen Scott Pelley at a CBS event in New York in 2013. Photograph: Charles Sykes/AP 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley fired by CBS News after clash Move comes after meeting in which Pelley said network chief Bari Weiss was ‘murdering’ news show Scott Pelley, one of the most well-known and respected journalists in broadcast journalism, has been fired by CBS News after clashing with network brass over last week’s severe round of cuts at 60 Minutes , the show he has worked on since 2004, the Guardian confirmed. While changes were long expected at 60 Minutes , CBS News management shocked staffers last week by firing the network’s executive producer, executive editor and two correspondents, Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi, without giving a specific reason for their terminations. During an extremely heated meeting on Monday morning with the show’s newly appointed executive editor Nick Bilton, along with another CBS News executive, Pelley rebuked Bari Weiss, the longtime opinion commentator who joined the network in October as editor-in-chief. “She’s murdering 60 Minutes,” Pelley said, as first reported by the Guardian. “She does not love this place. She was brought in to kill it and is doing exactly that.” A source close to the network said that executives had attempted to meet with Pelley after the terminations on Thursday, to no avail. Ultimately, Pelley met with Weiss and fellow executives on Tuesday, and she conveyed that his behavior was inappropriate. Pelley then told members of the show’s staff that he expected to be terminated, sources said. View image in fullscreen The termination letter from Nick Bilton to Scott Pelley. Photograph: Provided to the Guardian Pelley received a message from Bilton on Tuesday evening informing him that he had been “terminated for cause effectively immediately”. In the message, which was first reported by Puck’s Dylan Byers, Bilton called out Pelley’s conduct in the meeting. “Yesterday, you hijacked my first meeting with staff to disparage me, my qualifications, and my intentions with remarkable incivility and contempt,” he wrote. Bilton also sent an email to the staff of 60 Minutes informing them of Pelley’s termination. “You should hear this from me first. We have parted ways with Scott Pelley,” he wrote in the message, which was obtained by the Guardian. “I know how much Scott meant to many of you, and I don’t say this lightly. I made repeated attempts to have direct conversations with him over the weekend, and this afternoon I tried to find common ground. That was not the path Scott chose.” With journalist Anderson Cooper announcing earlier this year that he would be leaving the show, Pelley’s departure leaves 60 Minutes with only three full-time correspondents months ahead of the launch of its 59th season this fall: Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker and L Jon Wertheim. (CBS News journalist and former evening news anc